Reception of Met. 13,750-897 in Opera Librettos

Abstract

The influence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in secular dramas of several Italian courts of the 15th and 16th centuries paves the way for the birth of opera in Italy. The themes of the first musical dramas draw their inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses; since then, the Ovidian arguments have continued to attract the interest of composers and librettists throughout the history of opera. This article examines the adaptation of the love triangle between Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus, a legend created by Ovid, into opera. After a mythographic analysis of the characters, the authors analyze the adaptation of Met. 13,750-897 in three musical dramas: the pastoral héroïque by Lully-Campistron, the zarzuela by Literes-Cañizares and the masque by Handel-Gay. The detailed comparative analysis of the different librettos with the Metamorphoses demonstrates the writers’ fidelity to, or free adaptation from, their source. At the same time, the paper aims to detect the influence of other passages of this Ovidian epos on these works.